Various types of devices have been developed for implantation into the human body to provide various types of health-related therapies and/or monitoring. Examples of such devices, generally known as implantable medical devices (IMDs), include cardiac pacemakers, cardioverter/defibrillators, cardiomyostimulators, various physiological stimulators including nerve, muscle, and deep brain stimulators, various types of physiological monitors, and drug delivery systems, just to name a few. Some IMDs include varying amounts of electronic memory that may be used to store not only device operating and control software, but to store various types of patient- and device-related data. In addition, some of these same IMDs may include signal processing and telemetry circuitry, which allows some or all of the data stored in the memory to be transmitted to a remote computer network or other communication node, and/or the device to receive and store data transmitted to it remotely from a computer network or other communication node.
In many cases, after an IMD has been implanted in a patient, the patient may need to have periodic follow-up visits with a doctor or other type of practitioner. Alternatively, or in addition to periodic follow-up visits, patients with IMDs may need to periodically initiate a communication with a doctor or other type of practitioner at a medical facility or clinic, or periodically initiate a remote communication, such as described above, between the IMD and a remote network or other communications node. These periodic visits and/or communications, allow doctors or other practitioners to check the IMD and patient to determine, for example, whether or not the IMD is operating as programmed or perhaps should be programmed differently. These periodic visits and/or communications also allow, among other things, doctors or other practitioners to analyze some or all of the data stored in and/or transmitted from the IMD. These data can provide the doctor or other practitioner with various types of physiological data about the patient, and may also be used to determine whether or not the IMD is functioning properly.
Unfortunately, in some instances patients do not schedule a follow-up visit or do not call in or otherwise initiate a remote communication. In such instances, extra time and effort may be expended by medical or other personnel in contacting those patients that failed show up for, or call in to schedule, a follow-up visit, and/or otherwise failed to initiate a remote communication. This can result in increased medical-related and administrative costs, and a reduced level of medical care. Moreover, if the patient's IMD is configured to store various types of data related to certain physiological events, and the patient experiences a relatively high number of these events, the possibility exists that the IMD memory may become full and the IMD may overwrite some previously stored data before it has been transmitted to the computer network or other communication node. This can result in the loss of important physiologic data that may be helpful in the long term care, therapy, and/or treatment of the patient. This can also result in increased time, effort, and cost in requesting additional information from the patient regarding potential physiological events, should some data be overwritten. There is also a possibility of a loss of data accuracy if the patient is the only source of those data.
Hence, there is a need for a system and method that provides an alert to a patient having an IMD that reminds the patient to schedule and/or proceed to a follow-up physician visit, and/or to initiate a remote communication to transmit stored data or other information to a remote computer network or other communication node. The present invention addresses one or more of these needs. Furthermore, other desirable features and characteristics of the present invention will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description of the invention and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and this background of the invention.